Hi. This is Sammie, taking over my mom's blog for a minute (mostly because she bugged me to do it. But I need the writing practice, since I've decided to take on a challenge in which I write about a thousand words a day. However, that's another story).
Recently, I got to travel to Siem Riep, Cambodia, with a school service club called Village HOPE, which stands for Health, Opportunity, Prevention, and Education. The object of the service trip was to educate local Cambodian farmers about pesticides and using them properly. The farmers have no idea that pesticides are a poison; they think of them as medicine, that they are good because they kill all the bugs and help their plants grow. Our purpose in going was to explain the dangers of pesticides and how they could be properly used. (Pictures to follow).
On the first day, we met with 30 farmers in their communal building. The farmers were split into 5 groups of 6, and at each station one or two students would give a presentation. The respective categories were things like what are pesticides, proper pesticide use, protecting yourself against pesticides, and treating pesticide poisoning. My partner, Holly, and I spoke on the signs and symptoms of pesticide poisoning. We would go through our presentation with a translator at our disposal, and use flipcharts that had been translated into khmer with pictures to help the farmers who couldn't read.
It was an incredible learning experience. Each station was different from the others; with some the farmers would be silent, with others they would be outspoken. Sometimes we would zip through our presentation and would have to fill time by asking the farmers questions, other times we would still be answering their questions even as our time ran out and we would have to move to the next spot, promising them through our translator that someone in the next group would answer their question. Our translator, whose name was RJ, soon became an expert on our topic after reciting the presentation ten different times, and he soon was able to answer the farmers' questions when they asked him without having to consult Holly and I for answers. This led to a few frustrating times when RJ would get into long conversations with the farmers in khmer, and we would be left sitting awkwardly, listening to the complex tones of the language and wishing we were bilingual. I had so much respect for the translators at the end of the trip; I find languages incredibly fascinating although I'm horrible at them.
At each station we would ask the farmers if they had contacted some of the pesticide signs we spoke about. At almost every station, farmers admitted they had contacted some kind of affliction: headaches, nausea, rashes, diarrhea, and aching bones were some of the more common symptoms, although it was clear that these people had been suffering for a long time from pesticides and had no idea why. For those farmers who said that no symptoms had affected them, we explained that while no signs may show immediately, they could contact signs eventually, such as cancer. Although they may not have fully understood the idea of symptoms coming later, they did understand us when we said, "If you protect yourself against pesticides, you will be healthy and live longer!"
As difficult as it may have been for some of them, by the end of our presentations they believed us wholeheartedly. I even asked some of them at the end of our presentation, "Now that we've taught you these things, will you make sure to protect yourselves against pesticides?" They replied, with help from the translator, that they would do so. I was amazed at their willingness.
At the end of the morning, we did an activity that involved all of them. We had someone lie down on a large piece of paper and traced their body, then had all the farmers come up and mark the places on the drawing where they had been affected by pesticides. To protect themselves against these afflictions, we gave each farmer a set of rubber boots, a pair of gloves, and a mask, reminding them to wear long sleeves and pants to protect their skin. Each farmer left that day feeling enlightened, safer, and grateful. They continually thanked us for coming to teach them, while all the time I wanted to thank them for allowing us to teach them.
